


reprisal

by pensrcool



Category: Sugar Pine 7 RPF
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post Akrasia, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensrcool/pseuds/pensrcool
Summary: Parker wonders what it means that he remembers Cib’s last words to him and yet can’t remember his own last words. He knows they weren’t dignified, whatever they were, knows they were one of the many variations of “please, I’m sorry, don’t do this” that he had tried in desperation.Man. Everything is kind of fucked up.





	reprisal

**Author's Note:**

> i'm obsessed with all the different ways the cib/parker reunion could have gone, especially after the whole scene in cib's bedroom, so.

Parker wakes up in a pitch black box, and he is afraid.

He’s used to being afraid. He grew up more anxious than the kids around him, worrying about little things that no one else batted an eye at. His mom told him he worried too much, that he needed to be more confident, that he was going to be the first person to go grey from stress at age twelve. But he never learned how to curb it. He was twelve, then fifteen, then twenty, and the worry gnawing at his stomach was still there. It was still there when he met Steven and Cib and James, still there when he was locked in a room with Sami Jo and she frowned at him when he tried to speak, still there when Cib burst into his home, angry and drunk and hurting him over and over and--

So Parker knows fear. He knows that he needs to get a handle on this wave of terror before it overwhelms him, because he’s stuck in a box and he can’t see and he can barely move and whatever the hell is going on, he can’t get out of it if he’s curling up and crying. So he multitasks. He cries, but he skips the curling up and instead tries to figure out more about what’s happening. He can move, sorta. Not enough to sit up, but enough that he can run his hands over things. He’s definitely in a box. And it definitely has a seam, which means it definitely has a lid he can hopefully move. When he pushes against it experimentally, nothing happens, and that wave of terror washes over him again. He doesn’t want to die. He especially doesn’t want to die in a pitch black box. He shoves against the top harder, and he hears it move, but it doesn’t open. He screams. He punches it. He cries. 

“Please,” he says, even though he’s the only one there, even though he’s alone and going to die. _Just one last push_ , he tells himself. One more push, and then he can take a break. Just one more. Deep breath. One more. He closes his eyes. That doesn’t do anything when it’s already pitch black, but he feels like he’s supposed to do it anyway. He curls and uncurls his fists, readjusts his arms and shoves, and is shocked when--is that dirt?--comes pouring in. Shit. Shit shit shit he didn’t plan this far ahead and now he has to rely on his gut and his gut has never been that reliable in the first place and he’s _still going to die here._ He keeps pushing up with his arms, because what else is he going to do, and he’s more shocked than relieved when he punches through and hits air.

It’s hard, pulling himself out of the ground. He’s never been good at pull-ups, but apparently when his life is on the line, he can make them happen. He’s breathing hard. He hadn’t realized it until he was out, but the air in the box had been stale and thin. This air--this air is fresh air, and Parker is taking as many heaving breaths of it as he can. He lays on the ground, reveling in the sunshine that hurts his eyes, in the air that’s nice and everywhere, in the way he can spread his arms and legs out now that he’s not in an enclosed space.

It’s a long while before he sits up. His jeans are streaked with dirt, and so are the entirety of his sleeves. Granted, that’s a small price to pay for not dying, but he’s still acutely aware that he looks like shit. He squints at his surroundings, still not quite adjusted to daylight. There’s the hole he climbed out of. There’s a tombstone. No--there’s _his_ tombstone. It has his name and his birthday. He’s looking at his grave he just crawled out of. He feels vaguely nauseous, which only gets worse when he realizes he remembers dying. 

Cib had smelled like beer. That’s the clearest thing out of everything, the way Parker felt Cib’s drunkenness with all of his senses. It had been on his breath, in his words, in his eyes. Overwhelming. Everywhere. He’d never seen Cib look like that before, and Parker wasn’t brave at the best of times. It was scary. And Cib wouldn’t _explain._ Cib had just looked at him with anger and disdain and slammed into Parker’s face again and again, ignoring the way Parker begged, ignoring the way Parker apologized for a mistake he didn’t know he made. Parker hadn’t wanted to fight, was the thing. Parker just wanted it to _stop,_ wanted his face to stop throbbing, wanted to leave Cib alone, and Cib hadn’t even let him do that. Cib had grabbed him and thrown him on the ground, except he missed, except there was a table in the way, except Parker had died.

Parker wonders if it was always going to end like that. If--if Cib would have kept going. If his friend would have beat him to death with his bare hands. He doesn’t want to think about it too hard. He’s afraid of the answer. He tries to shake himself out of thinking about his own murder, but it doesn’t really work.

_Are you a good listener, Parker?_

Was he a good listener? People had said so, but that had always sounded suspiciously like a thing you say when you need to compliment someone but don’t actually like anything about them. What did it matter, anyway? Why did Cib care? Why was that the last thing he said to Parker? Why did that mean Parker had to die? 

He wonders what it means that he remembers Cib’s last words to him and yet can’t remember his own last words. He knows they weren’t dignified, whatever they were, knows they were one of the many variations of “please, I’m sorry, don’t do this” that he had tried in desperation. 

Man. Everything is kind of fucked up. He lays back down on the grass. 

What is Parker supposed to do now? He doesn’t have anything on him. Not a phone, not a wallet. On paper, he’s a dead man. Hell, up until a few minutes ago, he was dead _off_ paper, too. He can’t go home, as much as he wants to. He doesn’t have his keys, and the prospect of showing up and not being able to get in—or worse, showing up only for Jeremy and Andrew to reject him and drive him away—means going home is out of the question. His stuff is probably gone anyway, he realizes with dismay. They’ve probably already replaced him with a new roommate. He can’t blame them for that, not when rent was as steep as it was, but he feels like he deserves to wallow in the melancholy of being utterly displaced. Home is out of the question. Home is not a place he belongs in anymore. But… but he could go to the office. 

Parker’s not sure if that’s a good idea either, but he doesn’t really care. He can’t sit in this cemetery forever and he can’t go home, so he’ll go to the office. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Cib’s not there, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Cib _is_ there. He just knows he’s going to the office.

It takes Parker awhile to find his way out of the cemetery, and a longer while to orient himself with the city. He can feel people staring, which is fair. He’s covered in dirt. He looks like shit. It’s weird. He eats peanuts off the ground and shoplifts a can of tea. He gets on a bus and spends the entire time avoiding people’s eyes, instead staring at the blood on his shirt and thinking about how he’s the very definition of pathetic. It feels like an excruciatingly long ride. 

There’s a very real sense of trepidation when he steps off the bus, half a block away from the office. Muscle memory takes him through the parking lot and up the stairs, autopilot allowing him to think. 

He’s angry, he realizes. He was murdered by one of his friends over _nothing_ , and now he’s alive and confused and missing months of his life. _It’s not fair_ , he thinks, feeling a little petulant, and the unfamiliar anger coursing through him agrees. It’s not fair, and it’s Cib’s fault. 

When he comes to the door of the office, he doesn’t take a moment to breathe, or think, or anything. He pushes it open and gives Steve and James the most cursory of glances before he beelines for Cib, who’s lounging on a couch in the back of the room. 

Steve starts from behind him, if the chair clattering to the floor is anything to go by, and James jumps in front of Parker and shakes his head. He looks angry, which makes Parker more angry. Why is James defending Cib? What the hell did Cib ever do for him? What the hell did Parker ever do to James to make James hate him so much that he’d _defend_ the person who murdered him? He shoves James, who pulls a fist back.

“Back off, dude.”

“Back _off?_ ”

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you need to cut it out. Since when do you pick fights?”

“He killed me!”

Steven chooses that moment to speak up. He’s looking between the three of them, Parker, James, and Cib, and he’s gnawing on his lip.

“James.”

“What?”

“You gotta--you gotta stop.”

“If I get out of his way, he’s gonna kill Cib! It’s what I’d do!”

Cib lets out an affronted gasp at that, which Steve quickly waves off.

“I think… I think we have to let him do this. No, yeah. We have to let Parker do this.”

“No.”

“I’m serious. I’m being so serious right now. You have to get out of the way.”

“I’m not gonna just let--”

“ _Now.”_

James meets Parker’s eyes. He looks more pissed than before, but he puts his fist down and sidesteps to the right. Parker feels a small flash of gratitude for Steve and how he’s cleared the path to Cib, and then an awful kind of satisfaction at the look of horror on Cib’s face as Parker approaches. 

Most of Parker wants to hit Cib. A slightly smaller percentage of him wants to scream. And then there’s the part that nauseates him, the part that’s quietly whispering he should drag Cib over to the nearest table and slam _his_ head down, no explanation. 

“Cib,” he says, and even he’ssurprised at how level his voice comes out, “Are you a good listener?’

Cib stiffens, and Parker feels that awful kind of satisfaction again. Good. Those were the last words Parker ever heard. They should sting. 

“I mean, if you asked me, I’d say no. You ignored… everything. I said I didn’t know what you were talking about. I said I didn’t do anything. I said _sorry_. And you…”

This is where his voice breaks. Parker angrily wipes at his eyes and tries to forget he’s crying in front of almost all of his friends, none of who give a single shit about him. He’s _pissed,_ and he knows that that’s right. That he deserves to snap at people and be irrational. But there’s the crying too, the hollowness and disappointment and detached voice telling him that he should have seen something like this coming. Maybe not something as drastic as murder, but yeah, something like his friends abandoning him for someone they like more. There are other things too, all swirling around and conflicting and knocking Parker off kilter. He thinks he’s belatedly going into shock.

It doesn’t help that when he finally musters up the nerve to look back at Cib, Cib’s crying. 

“Parker,” he says, voice wavering, tears streaming, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

And just like that, Parker runs out of steam. 

He wants to say that it’s fine, wants to make a joke that no one laughs at and then smile with everyone when someone else says something funnier. He very suddenly wants to put this all behind him, but Cib is still speaking.

“I’ve thought about you every single day since you died.”

Cib winces, works his jaw for a moment before shaking his head. 

“No. You didn’t die, and Steve didn’t kill you. Neither did James.”

He lets out a breath. 

“I’ve thought about you every single day since I killed you.”

That makes something catch in Parker’s throat, and he’s not exactly sure why. 

“I—nobody deserves that. But you _really_ didn’t deserve it, dude. I mean. We’re all assholes. But you never were. There were so many times where you could have been— _should_ have been—and instead you were just. Parker.” 

Cib closes the distance between the two of them, lifting his shirt up to reveal the pistol tucked in his waistband. Parker wonders where he got it from, and the panicked frantic noises behind him tell him that James and Steve are wondering too. Cib doesn’t seem phased by them, instead staring at Parker and biting his lip.

“James was right. When you walked in that door, you wanted to kill me.”

He slips the gun into Parker’s hand.

“You should do it. I deserve it.”

The thing is, Cib isn’t wrong. Parker had wanted revenge, and it had seemed fair to consider taking it in the form of Cib’s life. But the gun feels so heavy in his hand. 

He remembers shooting lessons with his dad, where he’d struggled with the trigger and winced at the recoil, remembers inspecting the target when they were done, running his finger around the ragged edges a bullet had left and hating how he had jumped every time a shot cracked the air. He wonders whose gun it is. He wonders if he’s a good person for hesitating, or if he’s just a coward. He knows what Cib would do in this situation, which doesn’t make him feel any better about anything. 

He wants to say some of this to Cib, wants to say _something_ to Cib, but as soon as he opens his mouth something—no, someone—slams into his side, knocking him to the ground. Ow. The parts of him that hit the floor are already throbbing, promising a future array of bruises. When the gun is pried out of his fingers, Parker pulls his attention away from the ache in his side and directs it to everyone else. There’s a lot of yelling, but it’s pretty easy to figure out what’s going on. James tackled him in a misguided attempt to save Cib, and is now pinning Parker’s hands back and crooning about how he’s saved everyone. Steve and Cib’s voices are a little harder to make out, but Parker is able to pick out the thread of the argument: Steve wants Cib to leave for his own good and safety and Cib is refusing. 

Parker tries protesting his pseudo imprisonment. 

“I wasn’t going to shoot him.”

James digs his elbow into Parker’s back a little deeper in response, and Parker winces and takes it as a cue to shut up and focuses on making out the words in Cib and Steve’s back and forth. Steve sounds stressed, but that’s pretty normal. So is the way Cib’s voice rises, and the way Steve’s rebuttals get shorter and shorter until there’s a pause that means he’s putting his hands on his head and is about to concede.

Sure enough, Steve bites out a “fine”, and then there are footsteps near Parker’s head and his arms get released. He rolls himself into a sitting position, surprised by how Cib’s crouched near his feet and offering a hand. 

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” he says again, and Cib gives him a smile that’s uncharacteristically melancholy. 

“I know.”

Cib grabs his hand then, no longer content with waiting, and pulls him up. Steve and James both look stormy in a way that makes Parker want to flinch, but neither of them are making any moves towards him, so he tries to bury that particular strain of worry. Cib… is still holding his hand. Parker wonders if he should pull away, and then Cib answers that for him by swinging both of their hands into the air. 

“Me and Parker are gonna talk. You and James are gonna… I don’t know, go hang out with Autumn. She loves that.”

Steve and James look at each other and take a moment to mumble through the situation. Parker doesn’t miss the pointed glances thrown his way, and he wishes he could be angry again, but he’s not. He’s exhausted more than anything, a tired that seeps into his bones and makes him want to take a two day nap. 

When Steve and James finally pull away from each other, Steve claps his hands together. 

“James and I have decided that we are going to go hang out with Autumn.”

Then he looks directly at Parker. 

“Also, I am not responsible for anything that happens with… this.”

He accompanies that with a wave between Parker and Cib, and then he nods and walks out, James trailing behind him.

When the door clicks shut behind them, Cib drops Parker’s hand, looking sheepish in a way Parker’s never seen before. His face is still tear streaked, and Parker’s hit with a wave of guilt for even briefly believing that Cib had killed him on purpose, and another over how Cib had immediately pinpointed and accepted the part of Parker that had wanted Cib dead. 

Parker doesn’t know how long James and Steve are going to be gone, or how to start untangling his emotions, but he knows he’s already begun to forgive Cib, even if he shouldn’t. He knows that doesn’t mean things are okay. He knows Cib crying isn’t going to make him stop replaying his own death every time he closes his eyes. He knows he still needs a shower and a place to live and probably a therapist, but Cib is standing next to him, awkward and apologetic, and Cib had handed Parker a gun with a determined look in his eyes, and. 

Things aren’t okay. But they’ll get there. 


End file.
